The Draft Post

In lieu of a decent column about the NBA draft, might I make the following points:

1. Huuuge Torres Strait Islander Nathan Jawai is the 41st pick of the draft, going to the Indiana Pacers. This guy can't be worse than Bogut, right? Let's hope he makes the team.

2. The Warriors do little with their pick. Dang it.

3. One of the Lopez twins looks really funny (image courtesy of the Sports Guy, by Seth Wenig for AP photos). So too does NBA Commish David Stern, three feet shorter shaking his hand.

4. This makes the Sports Guy remember a hauntingly similar image from the annals of baseball cards: Oscar Gamble.

When Shaq raps, I listen

"I love 'em, I don't leave 'em. I got a vasectomy, now I can't breed 'em."

I'm no stranger to freestyling. Sure, egos get hurt, but the adrenalin is intense and the benefits for the crowd are there for all the crowd to see. There's much, much more of Shaq here

I've heard that when you crack a compass, the magnetic is toxic*

I was brilliant enough to attend the artist's's party for the Sydney Biennale on Wednesday. It was quite a night, in less ways than ten. The party was held on Che Cockatoo Island, a glittering jewel in Sydney's otherwise shithouse harbour. We waited for what seemed like 20 minutes for the ferry to depart. From the top deck you could see the harbour bridge in the night sky and it was something else. The black steel, those girders, the lighting, the night sky, the gargantitude of it all. It was magical and it reminded me of the first Batman movie, my number one guy.

We were shepherded through a hundred metres of scooped out sandstone and before us stood a great big hall, with a stack of arty types mingling, dancing, greedily scoffing free alcohol and food, and enjoying the many luxuries that accompany the life of an artist. I had the best time at that party. The wife and I thank the organisers very much. The party raged and we danced. We had to call it a night around 1, but not before some great peoplewatching, stimulating conversation, tomato juggling, and all around soaking up of island meets art culture. Oh Biennale. Boom shaka jam.

*It's the same principle as when you crack a thermometer and the mercury is toxic

NBA Finals part two

Amazingly my prediction turned out to be wrong and the Celtics beak the Lakers in 6 games. Also amazingly, there were a stack of people at Cheers bar, where i caught the last 10 minutes of game 6, who seemed absolutely over the moon at the C's win. I gotta say, I let out a few yelps when the Dogs took out the title in 04, but my fannitude is nothing compared to these freaks. Spose i'm just not used to seeing people care about basketball teams like that. One guy in particular was way too happy - heck, he was even more excited that Kevin Garnett (by the way this reporter takes the cake, for today, in terms of stupidity. "Kevin, you've dreamed of winning a championship. How does the reality compare with the dream?" What's he supposed to say? Well, reality is better. The dream is obviously more dream like, but it's not quite the same as reality. Great question!) I was very happy for the original manchild, don't get me wrong. We've been through so much together. I really feel he can kick on and win another title in the next 10 to 15 years. It was also funny watching Paul Pierce's reaction: "I told y'all! Yeah!!!" Simple but good.

What now on the sporting horizon? Sports Guy has kind of demolished Wimbledon for me, if it wasn't already. The Euro champs are heating up. I really want to watch Italy Spain but i don't think SBS is televising it. Goddamn it! Meanwhile the dogs are laying turd after turd. This isn't a rebuilding year, by the way - it's a demolishing year, where they fall apart and destroy all the foundations. Rebuilding will be the next year or two. And the Kings are dead too. Sport, you've left me unfulfilled once again. I shall now go and play with my Kubb sticks.

He died with a Gaytime sticking out of his jacket pocket

It is an interesting non-fact that of all the great
dualities that underpin, or if you like permeate
reality, 'stop-start' receives surprisingly little
attention. It is a disinteresting fact that this unity
underlies all others. Figure that out, dipshit.

- Anonymous,
Anonymity for Dummies

I first encountered the Illuminati in a manner not unlike most of you, my temporarily distracted readers. In other words, I can't recall. But it sits there, in plain obscurity - knowledge of knowledge, of a feeling, of something. That was a long time ago, you see. Certain things have come to pass and I'm now in a position to say something more substantial about the Illuminati. To all but a demented few, this will be news. He died with a Gaytime sticking out of his jacket pocket.

Also in his jacket pocket were a mobile phone, some maroon-coloured lint spiced with sand, and a soggy, ink-stained piece of paper torn from a notepad and folded a single time, haphazardly. We'll get to that presently. The phone contained no contacts, no user generated files and a single sent message. The text of that message was !, an exclamation point. This isn't the placetime to recount that mysterious phoney tale. The lint had built up over six months, three weeks and 45 seconds. And continued to do so. Blurry ink notwithstanding, upon the paper was a triangle with a circle in it. The circle was supposed to be an eye. Underneath the seeing pyramid was written "Stop then Start."

The whole point of the Illuminati is that they're a secret society - a secret within a secret, if you care to check. If you're gagging to check, you'll also find a thousand and one unravellings of this secret. Most often it's power, sometimes chaos, occasionally order, rarely tantra. Yet these are all false and furphy. The real truth about the (232 year old?) Illuminati is that they are an unfaith-based society.

Specifically, their tenets are agnosticism and infidelity [in several senses, as we may not come to later]. Absense of belief, absence of commitment. Two shadows reflecting each other. We're imprisoned by our beliefs - as soon as we've got them we stop thinking! Like you'd ever stop thinking, you idiot. Well, I'm thinking about stopping, that I might start. So they say. As for infidelity, it's the secret to life on earth, so they say.

What's the point? What do they mean, what would they achieve by these dual idiocies? Could they really achieve anything? Further exposition would mean me getting into a whole heap of arcane, mundane, scientific, pseudo-spurious psychoriffic playgrounds of thought. If the intrigued reader really is, I recommend The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Bob Shea and R.A. Wilson. Just know that it's out of date by several decades, and wrong. That said, I've never read a better account of them and I doubt one exists. Alright, off you go.

NBA finals

The Lakers are playing the Celtics in the NBA Finals. I gotta say, I kinda hate the Lakers. Something about Kobe Bryant is just... eeurgh. He is a freaking good player though, and seems just too good for everyone else right now. What bugs me is that the Lakers were not supposed to be that much better than everyone else. It just kinda came outta nowhere. So here I am, rooting for the Celtics, who can't even pronounce Celtic. Kevin Garnett, the original man child, won't ever get a better chance to win the title. Based on regular season form you might have tipped the Cs, they did win 66 games, 10 more than the Showtime. But postseason they've been poor. Worst case scenario, they lose their first two games at home and the series is over in a cakewalk. I'm hopeful that they'll make a series out of it, and even squeak out a win. A sweep is probably too much to ask, although Kobe could slip on a banana peel and be ruled out for the Finals. Prediction: Lakers in 6.